Manager, Research Services,
Dissemination and Research Resources

Born and raised in Medford, Oregon, Cameron Trowbridge grew up in a family where art was collected and artistic activity encouraged (his mother was an art teacher, and his father, prior to becoming a psychology professor, was very active in the local artists' community). In college he briefly considered becoming a conservator but ultimately majored in art history, graduating in 1988 from the University of California, Berkeley. The summer of his junior year, he worked on an excavation at the ancient site of Tel Dor on Israel's coast, an experience that stimulated an interest in the art of antiquity—as well as an appreciation of Mediterranean beaches.

Photo: Dennis Keeley

While attending Berkeley, Cameron worked in the Environmental Design Library—a part-time job that turned out to be the beginning of his professional career. After college, he moved to Seattle, where he worked in the Health Sciences Library at the University of Washington, taking landscape architecture courses in his spare time. Three years later he moved east to work at the University of Michigan Library, where he eventually earned a master of science degree in library and information services. As a graduate student, he was particularly interested in the effort the library was undertaking to digitize and make accessible primary source material. He ultimately participated in designing user interfaces for accessing primary materials through the university's Humanities Text Initiative.

In 1997 he returned to California, taking a job at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which at the time was in a period of expansion. Cameron began work as a digital programs developer, and within a few years he had become the director of the museum's Research Library and Collection Unit, supervising substantive growth in the unit's staff and services. After over four years with the museum, he took advantage of an opportunity to come to the GCI as manager of research services and of the GCI's Information Center.

At the Institute, Cameron's responsibilities include overseeing conservation reference and research services for Getty staff and outside professionals, management of the GCI's project archives, and development of the conservation collection. He has appreciated having the chance to work with conservation professionals and to combine his interest in art with his past experience in science-related libraries. Outside of work, he combines his interest in art and books by collecting books, prints, and drawings produced by Northwest artists.